T.S.H. v. Green

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 19-3280

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T.S.H.; M.J., Next friend of H.R.J., a minor,

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiffs - Appellees,

v.

Clarence Green; Anthony Williams,

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendants - Appellants.

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Appeal from United States District Court

for the Western District of Missouri - St. Joseph

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Submitted: November 19, 2020

Filed: May 11, 2021

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Before COLLOTON, MELLOY, and KELLY, Circuit Judges.

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COLLOTON, Circuit Judge.

Clarence Green and Anthony Williams, police officers at Northwest Missouri

State University, investigated a report of misconduct by high school students

attending a summer camp on the university campus. Green was the chief of police;

Williams was an officer in the department. The students sued the officers for

allegedly violating certain statutory and constitutional rights during the investigation.

The officers moved to dismiss the claims against them, arguing that they were entitled

to qualified immunity. The district court denied the motion, but we come to a

different conclusion and therefore reverse.

I.

In June 2016, two high school students who are identified by their initials,

T.S.H. and H.R.J., attended a high school football camp at the University. They

stayed in a dormitory and received instruction from university coaches, but were

supervised by their high school coach. At the time same, the University also hosted

a high school cheerleading camp, and participants resided in a neighboring dormitory.

In reciting what transpired, we assume for analysis that the facts alleged in the

complaint are true.

During the camps, a female cheerleading coach reported to residence assistants

that she had seen people in a nearby window observing her, and possibly

photographing her, while she undressed in a dormitory room. The residence

assistants contacted Officers Green and Williams with the University Police. The

officers investigated and inferred that the window in question belonged to one of two

dormitory rooms that were assigned to seven football camp participants. According

to the students, the officers created an “offense report” that included the students’

names.

The students allege that Officer Williams directed their high school coach to

gather the seven players in a room and hold them there “for interrogation” about the

incident. Acting at the officers’ direction, “and in submission to their perceived

authority as law enforcement officers,” the coach assembled the players and told them

they were being investigated. The coach allegedly kept the players in the room “for

a period of hours,” questioned them, and asked to see photographs on their cell

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phones. The players revealed this information “[i]n submission to the perceived

authority” of the officers. When no one confessed, the players were expelled from

the camp.

T.S.H. and H.R.J. sued Green and Williams under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The

students claim that the officers violated their rights against unreasonable seizures

under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Specifically, the students assert that

they were subjected to an unlawful seizure, because their coach “confined” them at

the officers’ direction. The students also allege that the officers denied them certain

statutory rights to due process and privacy that are accorded to juveniles in federal

delinquency proceedings. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 5033, 5038. Finally, the students claim

that the officers conspired to violate their civil rights.

The officers moved to dismiss the complaint based on qualified immunity. The

district court concluded, however, that the students adequately alleged violations of

clearly established constitutional and statutory rights. Reasoning that qualified

immunity could not be established “on the face of the complaint,” Bradford v.

Huckabee, 330 F.3d 1038, 1041 (8th Cir. 2003), the court denied the motion to

dismiss. The officers appeal, and we have jurisdiction to consider their interlocutory

appeal addressing purely legal issues. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985).

II.

State actors are entitled to qualified immunity from suits under 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983 “unless (1) they violated a federal statutory or constitutional right, and (2) the

unlawfulness of their conduct was ‘clearly established at the time.’” District of

Columbia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589 (2018) (quoting Reichle v. Howards, 566

U.S. 658, 664 (2012)). A right is “clearly established” if “every reasonable official”

would have known the conduct was unlawful at the time of the alleged violation. Id.

at 589-90. A reviewing court must not define clearly established law at a “high level

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of generality,” because that approach “avoids the crucial question whether the official

acted reasonably in the particular circumstances that he or she faced.” Id. at 590

(quoting Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765, 779 (2014)). “[S]pecificity of the rule

is especially important in the Fourth Amendment context.” Id. (internal quotation

omitted).

We review de novo the denial of a motion to dismiss based on qualified

immunity. Because the appeal arises from a ruling on a motion to dismiss, we accept

as true all of the complaint’s factual allegations and view them in the light most

favorable to the plaintiffs. Stodghill v. Wellston Sch. Dist., 512 F.3d 472, 476 (8th

Cir. 2008).

A.

The officers first argue they are entitled to qualified immunity on the Fourth

Amendment claim. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from “unreasonable

searches and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. The appeal presents two issues

through the lens of qualified immunity: whether the officers seized the students and,

if so, whether the seizure was reasonable.

On the question of seizure, the students allege that the officers “instructed”

their coach to confine the students to a room and question them about the incident.

“Consistent with the instructions of Green and Williams, and in submission to their

perceived authority,” the coach then confined the students to a dorm room. The

students claim that their coach “was acting at the behest of” and “following the

instructions of” the officers throughout the confinement. And the students allege that

they, too, acted “[i]n submission to the perceived authority” of the officers.

Because the officers allegedly knew that the coach carried out the seizure at

their direction, and because the coach allegedly intended to assist the officers, we will

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assume for the sake of analysis that the coach was acting as an agent of the officers.

See United States v. Ringland, 966 F.3d 731, 735 (8th Cir. 2020). Because the

students claim that they submitted to the officers’ authority, we will also assume that

they were seized within meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

Even so, the officers argue, any seizure was reasonable, or at least they

reasonably believed that was the case. They contend that the students, on these

alleged facts, had no clearly established right to be free from seizure by school

officials acting at the behest of university police. As this court has observed, “in the

public school context, children have a diminished expectation of privacy, and this

expectation becomes even more diminished for school children engaged in

extracurricular activities and athletics.” Barrett v. Claycomb, 705 F.3d 315, 323 (8th

Cir. 2013).

A school official need not have probable cause to search a student in a school;

“[r]ather, the legality of a search of a student should depend simply on the

reasonableness, under all the circumstances, of the search.” New Jersey v. T.L.O.,

469 U.S. 325, 341 (1985). A student search is reasonable if it is “justified at its

inception,” and “reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the

interference in the first place.” T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 341 (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392

U.S. 1, 20 (1968)).

The law is not settled on whether the same reasonableness inquiry applies to

student seizures, see K.W.P. v. Kan. City Pub. Schs., 931 F.3d 813, 822 (8th Cir.

2019), but there is no clearly established law to the contrary. At least one circuit has

concluded that the reasonableness standard from T.L.O. applies to student seizures.

Gray ex rel. Alexander v. Bostic, 458 F.3d 1295, 1304 (11th Cir. 2006). This court

and the Ninth Circuit have reserved judgment on whether to apply T.L.O. or the

objective reasonableness standard from Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989).

K.W.P., 931 F.3d at 926; C.B. v. City of Sonora, 769 F.3d 1005, 1029-30 (9th Cir.

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2014) (en banc). Given the state of the law, a reasonable officer could have

proceeded on the understanding that a student seizure is permissible if it is reasonable

under the standard of T.L.O.

Although the alleged seizure in this case did not occur at the high school and

was initiated by law enforcement, reasonable officers could have believed that

probable cause was not required. We have applied the reasonableness standard to

searches of high school students outside of “traditional school grounds,” because the

“nature of administrators’ . . . responsibilities for the students entrusted to their care,

not school boundary lines, renders the Fourth Amendment standard in the public-

school context less onerous.” Shade v. City of Farmington, 309 F.3d 1054, 1061 (8th

Cir. 2002).

T.L.O. left open whether the reasonableness test should apply to actions

“conducted by school officials in conjunction with or at the behest of law

enforcement agencies,” 469 U.S. at 341 n.7, but our decision in Shade applied the

reasonableness standard where both school officials and law enforcement officers

were involved. 309 F.3d at 1060. Although school officials initiated the search in

Shade, other courts have applied the reasonableness standard to student seizures

effected at the behest of police. An example is Milligan v. City of Slidell, 226 F.3d

652 (5th Cir. 2000), where police officers had students called out of class for

questioning about a rumored fight, and the court measured the reasonableness of the

“seizure” in light of the “lesser expectation of privacy” enjoyed by students in the

school environment. Id. at 655-56.

Given that Green and Williams were employed by the University Police, it is

also noteworthy that searches conducted by school police or school liaison officers

have been evaluated under a reasonableness standard. See People v. Dilworth, 661

N.E.2d 310, 317 (Ill. 1996); Commonwealth v. J.B., 719 A.2d 1058, 1060, 1062 (Pa.

Super. Ct. 1998). We recently rejected an argument that clearly established law

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required “probable cause” before a school resource officer could summon a high

school student to the school office for interrogation about an alleged sexual assault.

L.G. v. Columbia Pub. Schs., No. 20-2161, 2021 WL 1030977, at *2-3 (8th Cir. Mar.

18, 2021). In light of these decisions, the students had no clearly established right to

be free from a seizure instigated by Green and Williams if it passed muster under a

standard of reasonableness.

Under the facts alleged here, we further conclude that a reasonable officer

could have believed that the seizure was reasonable. When the principles of T.L.O.

are applied to this context, a seizure is “justified at its inception” if there are

reasonable grounds to believe that “the student has violated or is violating either the

law or the rules of the school.” 469 U.S. at 342. A seizure is reasonable in scope if

it is “reasonably related to the objectives” of the investigation and not excessive in

light of the student’s characteristics and the nature of the alleged infraction. Id.

There were sufficient grounds on these facts to place the officers’ action at least

within the gray area for which qualified immunity is available.

On justification for the seizure, the students allege that the officers described

the cheerleading coach’s allegation as a “possible Title IX incident.” Title IX is a

federal statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in “any education

program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a). But

the students contend that because the cheerleading coach was neither a student nor

an employee of the University, there was thus no reasonable justification under Title

IX for the seizure. They argue that the officers were attempting instead to “prove the

commission of a crime,” such as invasion of privacy under Missouri law. See Mo.

Rev. Stat. § 565.252.1(1).

We think a reasonable officer could have believed that either basis justified an

investigatory seizure. Under then-applicable Title IX guidance, a school with

knowledge of “student-on-student harassment that creates a hostile environment” was

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required “to take immediate action to eliminate the harassment, prevent its recurrence,

and address its effects.” Dep’t of Educ., Off. for C.R., Dear Colleague Letter (Apr.

4, 2011), at 4. The same guidance said that “Title IX also protects third parties from

sexual harassment . . . in a school’s education programs and activities,” and included

the example of “a visitor in a school’s on-campus residence hall.” Id. at 4 n.11.

Based on the report of the cheerleading coach who was housed in the University’s

dormitory, the officers reasonably could have believed that they were authorized to

investigate the incident to comply with the prevailing Title IX guidance.

So too with a possible violation of Missouri law. A person commits the

offense of invasion of privacy if he photographs another person, without her consent,

while she is in a state of full or partial nudity and is in a place where one would have

a reasonable expectation of privacy. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 565.252.1(1). Reasonable

officers could have believed that the cheerleading coach’s report gave reasonable

grounds to suspect that questioning the students would turn up evidence about

invading the privacy of the cheerleading coach.

Finally, the seizure must have been reasonable in scope. The students claim

that they were “not free to leave for a period of hours.” Other courts, however, have

found student seizures of similar durations to be reasonable. In Shuman ex rel.

Shertzer v. Penn Manor School District, 422 F.3d 141 (3d Cir. 2005), the court held

that a student seizure lasting around four hours was reasonable for an investigation

of possible sexual misconduct. Id. at 149. In Stockton v. City of Freeport, 37 F.

App’x 712 (5th Cir. 2002), police detained students for “several hours” at a municipal

building after a threatening letter was found in a computer room at their high school.

The students here identify no authority placing a more precise limitation on the

duration of a seizure for questioning in a school-related environment. In light of this

authority, we conclude that the students had no clearly established right to be free

from a seizure that extended for a period of hours.

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In sum, it was reasonable for Officers Green and Williams to believe that a

seizure of high school students by a high school coach acting at the behest of the

officers was permissible if reasonable. It was also reasonable for the officers to

believe that the seizure was justified under that standard. The officers thus did not

violate the students’ clearly established rights under the Fourth Amendment, so they

are entitled to qualified immunity on this claim.

B.

The officers argue that they are also entitled to qualified immunity on the

statutory claims brought by the students. The students maintain that 18 U.S.C. § 5033

“provides specific due process rights for juveniles who have been ‘seized’ in

connection with a criminal investigation.” They also contend that the officers

violated their “right to privacy” by disclosing certain information in violation of 18

U.S.C. § 5038.

The two statutes at issue concern juvenile delinquency proceedings under

federal law. “Juvenile delinquency” is a violation of federal law committed by a

person under the age of eighteen “which would have been a crime if committed by an

adult.” 18 U.S.C. § 5031. If a juvenile arrestee is not surrendered to state authorities,

then the Attorney General must certify “that there is a substantial Federal interest in

the case” before “any proceedings against” the juvenile may occur in federal court.

Id. § 5032.

Federal law provides additional protections for defendants in juvenile

delinquency proceedings. Before a juvenile who is “taken into custody for an alleged

act of juvenile delinquency” may appear before a federal magistrate judge, officers

must “advise such juvenile of his legal rights” and notify both the juvenile’s parents

and the Attorney General of the arrest. Id. § 5033. The name of the arrested juvenile

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must not “be made public in connection with a juvenile delinquency proceeding”

unless he is prosecuted as an adult. Id. § 5038(e).

The statutes cited by the students are not applicable here. The students were

not charged with a federal crime. There was no appearance before a magistrate judge

and no juvenile delinquency proceeding that triggered the statutory protections or

procedures. The officers are thus entitled to dismissal on these claims.

C.

The officers also contend that the district court should have dismissed the

students’ claim alleging a conspiracy to violate civil rights. To prove a civil rights

conspiracy, a plaintiff must show that a defendant conspired with others to deprive

him of a constitutional right. Askew v. Millerd, 191 F.3d 953, 957 (8th Cir. 1999).

If a reasonable officer could believe he was acting lawfully as an individual, then he

also could believe that he was acting lawfully by working with a colleague toward the

same end. See Hale v. Townley, 45 F.3d 914, 920-21 (5th Cir. 1995); cf. Ziglar v.

Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. 1843, 1868-69 (2017). Because Green and Williams reasonably

believed that they were acting lawfully, they violated no clearly established

constitutional right by acting in concert on their investigation. The officers are thus

entitled to qualified immunity on the conspiracy claim.

* * *

For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the district court’s order denying

qualified immunity and remand with directions to dismiss the claims against Green

and Williams.

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KELLY, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

Because I believe T.S.H. and H.R.J. have stated a plausible claim for violation

of their Fourth Amendment rights, I respectfully dissent. See Hafley v. Lohman, 90

F.3d 264, 266 (8th Cir. 1996) (“Dismissal is inappropriate unless it appears beyond

doubt that the plaintiff[s] can prove no set of facts in support of [their] claim which

would entitle [them] to relief.” (cleaned up)). Assuming the standard articulated in

New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985), applies to a seizure of high school

students carried out by their football coach at the behest of law enforcement and away

from traditional school grounds,1 I disagree with the court’s conclusion that the

seizure at issue here was reasonable.

Under the T.L.O. standard, we must evaluate both whether the seizure was

“justified at its inception” and whether it “was reasonably related in scope to the

circumstances which justified [it] in the first place.” 469 U.S. at 341 (cleaned up)

(quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20 (1968)). As an initial matter, it bears

emphasizing that “T.L.O.’s two-part test in the school setting operates as a limited

‘special needs’ exception to the warrant and probable cause requirements of the

Fourth Amendment.” Scott v. County of San Bernardino, 903 F.3d 943, 949 (9th Cir.

2018) (citing Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 653 (1995)); see also

Schulkers v. Kammer, 955 F.3d 520, 537 (6th Cir. 2020) (describing the special needs

doctrine). That is, it is based on the principle that “[a] search unsupported by

probable cause can be constitutional . . . ‘when special needs, beyond the normal need

1

Though I am not necessarily convinced that the T.L.O. standard applies under

these circumstances, it was clearly established in 2016 that reasonableness is the

minimum standard governing the officers’ conduct. Cf. Reynolds v. City of

Anchorage, 379 F.3d 358, 372-73 (6th Cir. 2004) (Moore, J., dissenting) (explaining

that “when confronted with a search . . . initiated by law enforcement officers not

under the supervisory control of school authorities, courts have uniformly held that

probable cause is required,” and collecting cases to that effect).

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for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement

impracticable.’” Acton, 515 U.S. at 653 (quoting Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868,

873 (1987)). As pertinent here, courts have recognized that students’ “Fourth

Amendment rights . . . are different in public schools than elsewhere. . . . because

schools have a legitimate need to maintain an environment in which learning can take

place.” Burlison v. Springfield Pub. Schs., 708 F.3d 1034, 1039 (8th Cir. 2013)

(cleaned up); see also Acton, 515 U.S. at 653 (explaining that the reasonableness

standard applies in public schools because traditional Fourth Amendment

requirements “would unduly interfere with the maintenance of . . . swift and informal

disciplinary procedures” and “would undercut the substantial need of teachers and

administrators for freedom to maintain order in the schools” (cleaned up)).

Turning to the first part of the T.L.O. test, “a search of a student by a teacher

or other school official will” generally “be justified at its inception when there are

reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the

student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.” 469 U.S.

at 341-42 (cleaned up). In concluding that the seizure here was justified as part of a

possible Title IX investigation, the court—in my view—fails to construe the

Amended Complaint in the light most favorable to T.S.H. and H.R.J. The students

allege that “at no time during [their] confinement and interrogation was the NWMSU

Title IX investigation officer informed of this matter.” This allegation suggests that

the university employed a “Title IX investigation officer” to initiate and oversee such

investigations during the relevant period. See 34 C.F.R. § 106.8(a) (“Each recipient

[of federal funds] must designate and authorize at least one employee to coordinate

its efforts to comply with its responsibilities under [Title IX], which employee must

be referred to as the ‘Title IX Coordinator.’”). The failure to notify the university’s

Title IX officer of the incident, together with the fact that the officers described the

cheerleading coach’s allegation as only a “possible Title IX incident,” implies that the

cheerleading coach did not file a formal Title IX complaint and thus, that the officers

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knew no formal investigation or grievance process had been triggered. See id.

§§ 106.8(c), .45(b).

Although a university may still initiate “an informal resolution process” absent

a formal complaint, the regulations make clear that this informal process requires,

among other things, “the parties’ voluntary, written consent.” Id. § 106.45(b)(9).

Here, the students adequately allege that they never consented to the seizure. And

because the Amended Complaint suggests the officers made no effort to coordinate

with the university’s Title IX officer or to comply with Title IX regulations, there is

no basis to conclude that they reasonably believed they had authority under Title IX

to independently initiate an investigation and to seize and interrogate high school

students. Cf. Dep’t of Educ., Off. for C.R., Dear Colleague Letter (Apr. 4, 2011), at

4 (“[A] school’s Title IX investigation is different from any law enforcement

investigation, and a law enforcement investigation does not relieve the school of its

independent Title IX obligation to investigate the conduct.”); Plamp v. Mitchell Sch.

Dist. No. 17-2, 565 F.3d 450, 459 (8th Cir. 2009) (explaining that although school

staff have “the authority, if not the duty, to report” potential Title IX violations to “the

school administration or school board,” such “authority does not amount to an

authority to take a corrective measure or institute remedial action” under the statute).

Nor was the seizure here justified by any “reasonable grounds” to suspect that

T.S.H. and H.R.J. had violated Missouri law. See T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 342. As the

court notes, the students contend that the “purpose of the officers’ investigation was

to prove” that the students had invaded the cheerleading coach’s privacy. See Mo.

Rev. Stat. § 565.252.1(1) (2017). According to the Amended Complaint, the

cheerleading coach wrote in an incident report that (1) she saw “several figures in a

couple different windows” who seemed to be “looking straight at her” and (2) she

thought she saw a phone “to take pictures.” Aside from this, the officers knew only

that T.S.H. and H.R.J. were among seven students assigned to rooms in Tower Suites

West—a building the students allege to be “quite some distance away” from the

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cheerleading coach’s dormitory—which could have been the rooms in which the

cheerleading coach saw the “figures.” With no other evidence linking T.S.H. and

H.R.J. to the incident, it was unreasonable for the officers to suspect that they were

the people the cheerleading coach saw in the dormitory windows, that they were

holding the phone she thought she saw, or that they actually took any photo at all.

Finally, the Amended Complaint suggests that T.S.H. and H.R.J. were seized,

questioned, and searched in furtherance of an ordinary criminal investigation, rather

than a “special need” to maintain an appropriate learning environment, facilitate the

imposition of informal school discipline, or maintain order and safety in a school

setting. See, e.g., Am. Compl. ¶¶ 51-53 (describing how the officers—and not the

students’ coach—initiated the investigation); id. ¶ 55 (alleging that the football coach

was acting pursuant to the officers’ instructions when he told the students they were

being investigated for committing a crime); id. ¶ 64 (alleging that one of the officers

prepared an Offense Report based on the investigation that ultimately concluded that

no one would face criminal charges). According to the Amended Complaint, the

cheerleading coach did not report the incident—which had occurred the previous

evening—until she checked out of her dormitory room. From this, it is reasonable to

infer that the cheer camp had ended, that there was no risk of students engaging in

future similar conduct, and thus, that there was no special need to restore order or

safety. At base, an officer’s seizure of a student is not reasonable “‘where the

officer’s purpose is not to attend to the special need’ in question.” Scott, 903 F.3d at

950 (quoting Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 737 (2011)).

Moving to the second prong of the T.L.O. test, even if the seizure was justified

at its inception, it was not “reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which

justified the interference in the first place.” T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 341. A seizure “will

be permissible in its scope when the measures adopted are reasonably related to the

objectives of the [seizure] and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of

the student and the nature of the infraction.” Id. at 342. In response to the students’

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claim that they were detained for “a period of hours,” the court today reasons that

“student seizures of similar durations” have been found permissible in the past. In

my view, this approach fails to balance the duration of this particular seizure with the

nature of the infraction. This is evidenced by the examples the court cites: one case

involving forced sexual contact, Shuman ex rel. Shertzer v. Penn Manor Sch. Dist.,

422 F.3d 141 (3d Cir. 2005), and another involving a threatening letter found in a

high school three days after the high school shooting in Columbine, Stockton v. City

of Freeport, 37 Fed. App’x 712 (5th Cir. 2002). In both, the perpetrators were easily

and readily identified. And in both, the nature of the alleged conduct warranted an

immediate response to avoid disruption in the school or harm to other students. Here,

by contrast, there was no imminent risk of harm or disruption. The officers merely

suspected that one or more students among a group of seven, standing in a completely

different building, might have watched the cheerleading coach undress and might

have taken a picture. The invasion of the coach’s privacy is, of course, concerning

if true, but it is not sufficiently comparable to the alleged misconduct in Shuman and

Stockton.

Considering the absence of a security threat and the lack of any apparent

disruption to the camps or to the students’ learning environment, it was unreasonable

for the officers to believe that the hours-long detention and interrogation of T.S.H.

and H.R.J. were warranted. Compare Doe ex rel. Doe v. Little Rock Sch. Dist., 380

F.3d 349, 355 (8th Cir. 2004) (concluding that “highly intrusive” searches of

students’ persons and belongings violated the Fourth Amendment where “government

officials conducting the searches [were] in large part playing a law enforcement role

with the goal of ferreting out crime and collecting evidence”), with Burlison, 708

F.3d at 1036, 1040-41 (concluding that the “brief separation” of the student and his

belongings during a drug dog exercise was reasonable, especially in light of

“substantial evidence showing there was a drug problem in district buildings”).

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For these reasons, I would affirm the district court’s denial of the motion to

dismiss the students’ Fourth Amendment claims and, consequently, their civil rights

conspiracy claim as well. Otherwise, I concur in the court’s opinion with respect to

the students’ claims brought under 18 U.S.C. §§ 5033 and 5038(c).

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